


Wandering

by megzseattle



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Companions, Multi, Wandering Off, always have tea, no one listens to the doctor, the doctor has rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-13 21:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19259155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megzseattle/pseuds/megzseattle
Summary: Short looks at the Doctor and Rose's eternal attempts to come to terms with his companions' tendencies to wander.





	1. Chapter 1: Always Bring Tea

She didn’t mean to wander off in the alien bazaar. It’s just that she stopped to look at something shiny and pretty, and when she looked up he wasn’t behind her anymore. So technically he’s the one that wandered off, she thinks to herself as she tries to find him. 

She isn’t that worried. Really, how hard could it be to spot one tall, gangly alien in a brown pinstripe suit in a sea of creatures who are mostly neon green? She and the Doctor are the ones who stick out like a sore thumb here. 

Nonetheless, she is stymied at every turn, ends up roaming aimlessly in concentric circles around the center aisle until she finally gives up and sits on the edge of a fountain and waits for him to find her. 

When he does, he looks rumpled and frustrated, and Rose suddenly feels all squirmy and like a child who is about to be reprimanded. 

“What is the rule?” he says, sounding mostly resigned. “Go on, I know you know it…”

Rose bites her lip for a minute. “Don’t…” she began.

“Don’t wander off,” he cuts her off impatiently. “And what do you do nearly every time?”

“Wander off?” she offers with a weak smile that fell quite short of its mark. 

He snorts and runs a hand through his hair. She sits there for a moment and then feels for an opening. 

“Want some tea?” she offers. She holds up two thermal cups that she has been holding for a ridiculously long time now. 

He snorts again. “Well yes, actually,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not still cross with you.” 

“Okay,” she agrees amiably, and settles back to wait. Tea will help. And if it doesn’t, she has a bag of some vaguely sandwich-like things that will do the job.


	2. Chapter 2: Nearly Nuptial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Rose tries to help at first, laying a proprietary hand on the Doctor’s shoulder during dinner, leaning in to whisper and trying to make it obvious to those around them that he’s occupied._

A week later, they are guests at a wedding of several serpentine creatures who the Doctor knows from generations ago. After the ceremony, which involved orbs and oddly low-pitched flutes and a sibilant chant that made Rose oddly sleepy, an overly friendly female with the eyes of a python and a flickering tongue to match takes a somewhat determined liking to the Doctor. 

Rose tries to help at first, laying a proprietary hand on the Doctor’s shoulder during dinner, leaning in to whisper and trying to make it obvious to those around them that he’s occupied. Their new serpentine friend is completely nonplussed — perhaps because theirs is a society in which there is no concept of monogamy, the Doctor explains to Rose later — and just welcomes Rose with a smile and continues to hang on the Doctor’s other arm before finally dragging him out to dance. 

She turns to invite Rose to join in, too. Rose declines with all the graciousness she can muster. No need to start an interstellar incident. 

The Doctor makes a break for it several dances later and heads to her side, hair disheveled and lapels askew. “Rose,” he whispers, “let’s get out of here. This is getting to be a bit much. I think we just went through some kind of ritual dance that has implications I don’t even want to think about. I swear I heard something about the word nuptial.” 

Rose giggles, earning her a sour look from him. “Ok, ok,” she says. “Let me just figure out where I left my wrap.”

She strolls back over to where they were sitting during the meal, looking for the gossamer shawl the TARDIS had dug up for her earlier, the loveliest shade of iridescent pinkish-gold, but it is nowhere to be found. Glancing around, she finds a door behind that looks like it could be a storage area. She glances back towards the Doctor who is waiting impatiently, and signals that she’ll just be a moment. He saw her, right? 

She ducks through the arched doorway and finds herself in a room that stops her in her tracks. Highly polished silver surfaces on all sides, almost like mirrors but reflecting in a soft blur. Sparkling egg-like orbs dot the walls here and there and cast a pale blue glow, and there are fluttering things in the air that look like butterflies, but tinier and with trailing, wafting antennae that look like spider silk. 

She is so transfixed that she doesn’t notice when the door shuts behind her with a soft click, becoming a seamless part of the wall. She steps carefully into the center of the room, turning several times to watch the little creatures who spin around her. 

And then it hits her. She has no idea where she came in. The walls are featureless. 

It takes her twenty minutes of sounding out the walls to figure out where the door was, and another ten to figure out how it opens. When she emerges, she finds the Doctor striding her way, wrap in hand. 

“There you are!” he says. He quite clearly has the equivalent of lipstick on his cheek. “Honestly, Rose, you picked now to go exploring? Do you realize I just almost got married?” He looks around hurriedly. “And here comes my soon-to-be mother in law. Time to go!”


	3. Chapter 3: Catlike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Doctor,” she says slowly, “is this a bracelet or is it a tracking device?”_
> 
> _He grins at her innocently. “Why can’t it be both?”_

The next morning the Doctor presents her with a bracelet he claims he found in the bazaar a few days ago. Or at least it looks like a bracelet. But on inspection she finds that it contains a small bell that chimes gently when she moves. 

“Doctor,” she says slowly, “is this a bracelet or is it a tracking device?”

He grins at her innocently. “Why can’t it be both?” 

“I do not need a bell!” she exclaims, thumping him lightly on the arm. “I’m not a dog!”

“No,” he says slyly, “dogs will stay when you tell them to. You’re really much more like a cat. Never could tell a cat to do anything. ”

She punches him a little more firmly. He rubs his arm and looks a little wounded. “Well it seemed like a good idea at the time,” he mumbles.


	4. Chapter 4: Insectoid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s evening, the light is just faintly purple, and there is a faint hum of life around them — a creaking, croaking sound not unlike a frog echoes through the trees near them, followed by a rubbing sound somewhat like a cricket. The cool air is like a balm to her. If only the Doctor wasn’t just radiating his irritation with her, she would find it quite soothing out here._

He cuts her down as quickly as he can, although it feels like it takes forever, the sonic buzzing away through the thick, weblike material pinning her to the wall. 

“An egg sac,” he says from below her, his words clipped and his posture stiff as he hurries through his task. “You were about to become an egg sac. For impregnation with lots and lots of little insectoids.” 

Rose feels a little sick at the thought of this. She squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on breathing in and out, in and out, until she feels the last band snaps through and she slides a foot or two down the curved wall to the floor.

He helps her up abruptly, sets her on her feet and grimly gives her a once over with the sonic. “Come on,” he says, herding her out of the cave like a worried sheepdog, “we need to get going before anything returns.” 

And with that he stalks off, quickly, pulling her along by the wrist. Rose pauses for a second, and then scurries to keep up. It’s evening, the light is just faintly purple, and there is a faint hum of life around them — a creaking, croaking sound not unlike a frog echoes through the trees near them, followed by a rubbing sound somewhat like a cricket. The cool air is like a balm to her. If only the Doctor wasn’t just radiating his irritation with her, she would find it quite soothing out here. 

“Med bay,” he snaps at her when they get back to the ship. She follows along silently, not sure what to do. 

She hops up on the exam table and swings her feet a little, feeling small. The Doctor pulls out his sonic and buzzes away over each of her wounds and abrasions, making a clucking sound with each one and growing palpably more upset with each discovery. Her bloodied right knee, her painfully abraded left shoulder, the burn on her cheek, the ankle that had somehow been turned. 

“Nothing serious,” she offers, “right?”

He makes a noise just short of a growl. “Rose, no. Just no. That’s not the point.” He buzzes a little more. “Plus this one is going to take some stitches.” 

Rose watches his hands as he works; it seems easier than meeting his eyes just now. Finally he finishes, turns away to the counter and begins washing and fussing and putting things away. 

“I’m sorry?” she says quietly

“All done,” he says, not even turning around, his tone one of dismissal. “Go sleep.” 

Rose feels like the air had been squeezed out of her. She sits for a moment and then gets up to go. At the doorway she turns back. 

“I am sorry,” she says softly. “Really.” He stills but doesn’t turn, and in the end she leaves him there. 

\--

It is about an hour before he comes to find her. She isn’t in her room as he has expected but up in one of the viewing rooms he showed her long ago, gazing out the skylights at the stars. 

“Whatcha doing?” he asks, plopping down next to her on the floor. 

“Just havin’ a look,” she murmurs, giving him a half smile. 

“Look, about earlier,” he says —

“I am not going home,” she cuts in. He blinks at her. “You can take me and you can try to drop me off but I am not going. You can be mad an’ all that but you need me and I’m not leaving you.” 

“Excuse me,” he says in great exasperation. “In what conceivable universe are we talking about you going home at all? Is that really what you think of me, that I’m going to toss you off the ship the second you make me angry?” 

“Well no,” she says, “but you did seem rather beyond the usual pale of put out today.” 

“And?” he says, eyebrows raised.

“And I dunno, I thought you might be tired of me,” she says, blushing. “Being stupid an’ making you worry, all that.”

He frowns at her and takes her hands, focusing on her with great concentration. “Rose Tyler,” he said, “listen to me and listen well. I am never going to get cross enough to toss you off this ship. You might leave me someday — “ he waves to cut off her automatic protests “–but if you do it will be your choice, at a time when you need to do so, for your own health or safety or happiness or what have you. But until then, you’re just going to have to put up with your grumpy Time Lord who gets a bit overheated from time to time.” 

Rose giggles. “Okay, fair enough.”

“And I will have to deal with the fact that you apparently need a tracker sewn into your shirt collar in order to let me know where you’ve gone when we’re out on an adventure,” he adds.

“Oy!” she swats him on the arm. “Do not. Maybe you need to pay attention more."

"Could be. I get a little distracted sometimes, I suppose." He rubs his arm absentmindedly. "Not likely to change, though, that."

“I will try, try harder that is,” she says. “I’ll try to not wander. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at that, but I hope that my trying is enough.”

He gives her a small smile. “It’ll have to be. A Rose Tyler who’s always where she’s supposed to be isn’t really a Rose Tyler at all, is it?” 

She nods. “I suppose not.”

“In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.”


End file.
